Sunday, April 19, 2015

How to Read a Book 101

How to read a book? Pretty simple. All you require is some free time, ability to stay awake for longer periods and of course, hehe, a book.

So here's a short but effective tutorial of reading a book. I call it: RB-101.

Visit a nice little bookstore. Pick a book. Any book you want. If you're one of those who are affected by the thickness of a book, then pick a thinner one. Of course you're one of those who are scared the shit out by a thick book so surely pick a thin one ( 100 -200 pages maybe) .

Now once you're done picking a book, check it out. Look at it properly. Check how the cover looks like, how it feels, how the binding is ( you wouldn't want to spend your hard-earned money on a book whose pages are coming off! ) . You may lick a little of the binder gum , just to be sure ( yeah you dendrite-abusers lookityou getting all worked up ) .

After this , make sure you check the summary. So you turn the book around and at its back you will be able to read the blurb. Mind you , the phrases of praises should be avoided, unless you secretly believe that like a finalist crossing over to the takeshi's castle at the last round of takeshi's castle, one day you'll be able to come across that rare occurence of a negative remark made for the book by someone prominent.

If the summary impresses you, you begin the next step. You start judging the author. You can do it in many ways. Usually people judge the author by checking the price of the book, whether the book cover is nicely designed, how the cover feels , whether it's nice to rub one's cheeks on it or not. If the book is priced high, it surely is a big deal. You wouldn't be needing a big deal for this tutorial , so just pick a love story by a debutante Indian author.

Now some Indian love story authors come cheap. I mean their books come cheap , but their stories are cheaper. That's a separate topic of discussion altogether but what I mean is , you must make sure that you find the book readable. You should check the typeset of the book, if the fonts are too small, it's unreadable ( like as if I am reading a novel or a dictionery heh! ). If the pages are bad and the text is overlapping from other pages to the current one, it's a certainly avoidable book. Lastly, you must make sure the book weighs light. If it weighs much, it's, again, a cheap buy.

Good then, up until now you have picked up a book, judged the crap out of everything about the book ( instead of asking your friends or looking the title up on Goodreads as to whether it's a good book or not ) , and you're ready to pay about the book like a sleazy bastard who just wants to flaunt his membership card in front of everyone and portray himself as a serious reader while actually he is buying an Indian chic-flick. *cough* Anyway, you buy the book and then have a broad smile pasted on your face because a hot chick in a hotter pair of pants just came by to pay for her picks. Fuck the book , right? Yeah I figured.

Finally , comes the most important part. Reading.the.book. As you visualize the drums roll in your head, when you are opening the book up, I suggest you to smell the book. You make an update on Facebook that you're 'reading xyz' so that everyone knows that you are an easy target for spoilers ( some of your friends will make comments like 'yeah the girl dies at the end' but don't believe them unless you want to... he he he) . You insert the bookmark just so that you are set with all the finishing touches.

You are determined. You know you will finish the book. You know you will update your yearly read-count to 1 this time for sure. To ensure a double-insulation , you pick your phone up in order to put the phone on flight mode. You are about to do that when you see some interesting Whatsapp notifications where people are talking about a crazy good tv series/movie that you have in your hard disk for long but never got a chance to watch....